


On Reflection

by mogwai_do



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mogwai_do/pseuds/mogwai_do
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cheaper than therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Reflection

**Author's Note:**

> For Jhava who stayed up and listened to me ramble about a vague idea I had and then reminded me to write it down the next morning. Probably also owes something to a long ago conversation with Starmei about what an Immortal as old as Methos might retain in the way of beliefs and fears from his first life.

The first time he had ever seen his reflection it had been in the cool waters of the lake his people had visited every summer. It had wavered with the breeze, as insubstantial as the young soul who studied it with such fascination. The Elders had taught that the still waters could trap a soul and leave a man empty of all joy until it was freed to return to him. He had been wary, but his curiosity had outweighed his caution. It had been an imperfect image, but it had mattered little to the orphan child who saw himself for the first time with such wonder.

Too few years later, polished bronze had hazily mirrored a man no longer certain of his place in the world. The edges were blurred and indistinct on a soul for whom even the concrete certainties of life and death had become confused and mutable.

Centuries on, when a place had been found and a family of sorts regained, there had been no need of mirrors. The only reflections he had cared about were those he saw in his brothers' eyes, but this mirror warped in both the showing and the viewing until the subject was all but unrecognisable even to himself. Reflections endlessly distorted down the path of centuries until the mirror mattered more than the source. Crazed and cracked, it eventually shattered under its own weight.

For the longest time afterwards reflections were things to be avoided, in water, in metal, in the eyes of others, for the lies they told and the truths. But they could not be wholly avoided and each glimpse prompted a reciprocal adjustment, fear and horror of that image a greater motivation than anything had ever been before. And so it went for years uncounted; a shift here, a tweak there, never satisfied with the things he saw, until the horror eventually faded and while the fear yet remained, peace had been made with the face that looked back.

*****

Methos tipped back his beer and regarded the gaudy marquee across the deserted fairway. Late as the carnival ran, it was still deserted at 4am. He'd noted its arrival at the beginning of the week and its departure the following day. The timing couldn't have been better if he'd planned it, fortuitous to a degree he had learned early in life to accept in good faith. He would have liked to think that leaving his visit so late allowed others to enjoy the show, but the ruefully acknowledged truth was that it had taken him that long to gather his courage. He'd left it too long as it was and with each passing year it would only become harder to face. As accurate as mirrors had become over the millennia, they could not match the complexity his soul had attained over the same period of time.

With a last shake of his head, Methos drained his bottle and set it carefully on the wall before jumping lightly down. There was no hint of apprehension in the confident stride that carried him across the fairway and it was only the work of moments to open the heavy padlock that sealed his goal. A quick, deep breath and he slipped inside, letting the door swing silently shut before hitting the lightswitch with a hand that shook almost imperceptibly. The light was a revelation, no less shocking for being less-than-eagerly anticipated. The latest development in carnival technology lay before him.

A maze of mirrors stretched to an infinite horizon, strangely claustrophobic despite the illusory absence of walls. It would be so easy to become lost within those depths and never find a way out. An almost superstitious fear had him digging through his pockets for the marker he knew he'd had earlier. A large black X adorned the exit before he dared move a step further into the bewildering maze of self.

Methos looked about carefully, warily; every reflection was the same, superficially at least, but as he moved deeper into the maze they seemed to change. As he met each reflection's eyes he identified and named them - Adam Pierson - his precursor, Matthew - Michael before that. A dozen steps more and he began to recognise the older personae that had been unearthed of late, Benjamin Adams the most prominent among them.

More steps and time seemed as warped as his surroundings, but he kept on, accepting and then setting aside each aspect in turn, until it became almost painful. He couldn't decide whether it was the rawness of stripping the layers away one by one, or if it was the aching, crushing pressure of so many years accumulated, or some terrible combination of the two, leaving his soul a mass of raw, bruised pain.

As always seemed to happen, he paused too long before the image of the man he had been for the greatest portion of his life - worryingly, one of his most stable facets, but just because it was a cornerstone in his life, it didn't mean that he had to like it. Methos took a deep breath, breaking his double's gaze with difficulty, and scanned his surroundings from his new vantage point.

Despite his precautions, he was thoroughly lost in a mirrored landscape peopled by none but himself. Each reflection was a person in its own right, yet all of them were merely facets of the whole that was Methos. He was practically his own race for all the people he had been, each one traceable back through the tangled path of his history in a kind of incestuous family tree of self. Bracing himself, Methos met his double's eyes once more, then stepped beyond Death and into a realm he rarely acknowledged the existence of, even to himself.

Time slowed with the bittersweet thickness of poisoned honey as memories floated to the surface like bloated corpses, their reek corrupting so much for so long. He wrenched away from the tear-ravaged eyes that met his and fled deeper, barely acknowledging the procession of youths that looked on with sad, hazel eyes. He could barely see to run, but he could not stop until the sense of imminent collision brought him up short, his momentum resulting in a soft impact with the end of his journey.

The tears that streamed hot down his cheeks and blurred his vision took nothing from the sharp clarity of the eyes of the soul he had once been and in truth still was. Diamond-hard after the compression of thousands of years, impervious and invulnerable and thankfully untainted by what had followed. The tears still fell, but they had cooled until they felt more like the rain on his face once had as it had shattered and reformed the image of the child, the sacred lake forgiving his curiosity and gifting him with his soul's return - cleansed and whole.

Methos' breathing slowed gradually as he held that gaze and calmed; the tears eased and dried as he breathed evenly, finally feeling the heart of who and what he was - the seed and the forest. Within him he felt the sheer rightness of being simply himself - the sum total of all he had been in its unfractured form and he embraced it for the comfort it gave him in a world where no-one could comprehend more than tame facets of a creature millennia in the making. Ages of power rose within him like the tide or the first gusty breaths of a hurricane and he opened eyes that had drifted shut to see an anonymous man in non-descript clothing, kneeling with tear-damp eyes as wild as the world of his youth. He watched bright lightning caress the slim body like a lover, too much for even an Immortal body to contain. With a scream more primal than even his native tongue, Methos flung his arms out, releasing that creature into the world that had shaped it even as it had tried to wear it down.

Mirrored shards rained down; facets multiplying exponentially, a glimpse of a future unimaginable even to him. The tumbling, screaming crash of glass and metal echoed around him; jagged white light refracting and splintering endlessly; slivers of steel and silvered glass slicing clothes and flesh with equal ease. Sound and light and pain flooded his senses, drowning out the voices of logic and reason as he let go of the last vestiges of modern humanity.

A deep, shuddering breath in the settling chaos; the post-apocalyptic silence more deafening than the previous storm. With a sigh, Methos let his head drop, feeling the faint ticklish sensation of myriad cuts healing with Immortal speed. He opened tired eyes to see the devastation he had wrought. The hall had been hollowed by the force of his Quickening, scoured as his soul was; scorch marks decorated the walls and only a solitary light somehow still flickered fitfully in a far corner. In the dim room, the meagre light caught a thousand shards of broken glass until the floor was strewn with stars. Methos shook his head at the almost hypnotic twinkling, reason reasserting itself, the awareness that the noise could not have gone unnoticed and it was only a matter of time before someone decided to investigate.

He got to his feet stiffly, feeling all of his years in the ache of muscle and bone as it struggled to accommodate too much power once again. It would subside soon enough, he was used to it after all. He listened absently to the tiny crystal echoes of glass falling from his clothes and hair, delicate music to accompany the shedding of fallen stars. Shredded as his clothes were, they still held together enough to let him pass cursory inspection at this time of night. The path out was clear though the X was barely visible beneath the scoring and scorching; the metal door itself was warped and buckled from the force it had enclosed, though will alone had restrained it.

Outside, the air was crisp and fresh, the grass beneath his feet was damp with dew and the sky barely lit with the false dawn. The Highlander could scowl all he liked at the destruction if he ever found out about it, but it wasn't like Methos could unburden his soul to a psychiatrist - even if he trusted one enough to try, driving people mad had long since ceased to be a hobby of his.

Reaching deep into an internal pocket, Methos withdrew a thick bundle of bills and dropped it in the doorway. He had emptied Adam Pierson's pitiful account to provide it and it was more than enough to cover the costs, but then Adam didn't need it any more anyway - the note he'd left had said as much, nestled as it was amongst empty pill bottles in the car parked alone by the sea cliffs. It was a small price to pay for what he had regained - balance, perspective... himself. A new day would begin in a few short hours and what it would bring even he couldn't say, but he knew now that he could face it as he had that long ago morning by the lake - reborn to himself and once again whole.

 

FIN


End file.
